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WHAT CORPORATE America wanted was nothing less than the Third Worlding
of the US, a collapse of both present reality and future expectations.
The closer the life and wages of our citizens could come to those of
less developed nations, the happier the huge stateless multinationals
would be. Then, as they said in the boardrooms and at the White House,
the global playing field would be leveled.
And so the greatest surrender of sovereignty in US history is chalked up
as an inevitable result of a better world. This abandonment was not
initially controversial, nor even readily apparent, because Americans
simply were not told that it had occurred. They did not know that their
country -- which defeated in turn the British, the Mexicans, the
Confederacy, the Spanish, the Germans (twice), the Japanese, and
outlived the Soviet Union, had surrendered without a whimper to a junta
of trade technocrats armed with nothing more menacing than cell phones
and Palm Pilots.
Once having capitulated on economic matters, Americans would be taught
to accept a similar diminution of social programs, civil liberties,
democracy, and even some of the most basic governmental services. Free
of being the agent of our collective will, government could then
concentrate on the real business of a corporatist state, such as
reinforcing the military, subsidizing selected industry, and
strengthening police control over what would inevitably be an
increasingly alienated and fractured electorate. We would be taught to
deny ourselves progress and to blame others for our loss. - Sam Smith
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
WHAT CORPORATE America wanted was nothing less than the Third Worlding
of the US, a collapse of both present reality and future expectations.
The closer the life and wages of our citizens could come to those of
less developed nations, the happier the huge stateless multinationals
would be. Then, as they said in the boardrooms and at the White House,
the global playing field would be leveled.
And so the greatest surrender of sovereignty in US history is chalked up
as an inevitable result of a better world. This abandonment was not
initially controversial, nor even readily apparent, because Americans
simply were not told that it had occurred. They did not know that their
country -- which defeated in turn the British, the Mexicans, the
Confederacy, the Spanish, the Germans (twice), the Japanese, and
outlived the Soviet Union, had surrendered without a whimper to a junta
of trade technocrats armed with nothing more menacing than cell phones
and Palm Pilots.
Once having capitulated on economic matters, Americans would be taught
to accept a similar diminution of social programs, civil liberties,
democracy, and even some of the most basic governmental services. Free
of being the agent of our collective will, government could then
concentrate on the real business of a corporatist state, such as
reinforcing the military, subsidizing selected industry, and
strengthening police control over what would inevitably be an
increasingly alienated and fractured electorate. We would be taught to
deny ourselves progress and to blame others for our loss. - Sam Smith
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